scholarly journals Weak Generic Sentences: Partitioning and Comparison

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 507
Author(s):  
Zhiguo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Bare Plural ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Generic Sentences

<p>This paper addresses the question of what is the exact interpretation of weak generic sentences that take a bare plural subject and that are of the form <em>As are P</em>.</p>

scholarly journals Compare Within and Between Groups: The Interpretation of Weak Generic Sentences

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiguo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Internal Standard ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Standard ◽  
Know How ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
Precise Meaning ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Alternative Set ◽  
Generic Sentences

AbstractThis paper explicates the precise meaning of weak generic sentences of the form Ks are P, best represented by the Port Royal Puzzle sentence Dutchmen are good sailors. The sentence is true even though the majority of Dutchmen do not know how to sail at all and a fortiori do not sail well. Two observations motivate my analysis. One is that weak generic sentences express a property that “distinguishes the subject referent from other entities that might belong to the same category” (Krifka et al. 1995). This leads to the use of alternative set in my analysis. The other observation is that the scale structure of the predicate P affects the availability of weak generic reading for sentences of the form Ks are P. I argue that the interpretation of weak generic sentences involves: (i) partitioning the set of entities denoted by the bare plural subject based on the property denoted by the predicate P; (ii) partitioning the set of entities alternative to the denotation of the subject in a similar fashion; and (iii) comparing an appropriate partition in (i) to its counterpart in (ii) with respect to the predicate P. The Port Royal Puzzle sentence is true if and only if: those Dutchmen who can sail and who are good at sailing in comparison with the Dutch-internal standard of being good at sailing and those international citizens who can sail and who are good at sailing in comparison to the international standard of being good at sailing are such that the former population generally have better sailing skills than the latter population.

On Existential Bare Plural ‘Subjects’

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 29-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalina Kallulli
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Bare Plural ◽  
Bare Plurals ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Plural Subjects ◽  
Central Claim

Drawing on Strawson’s (1971) definition of the subject as performing the function of identifying the object of the speaker’s assertion and of the predicate as applying to this object without having to identify it, this article argues that being a predicate and being (part of) the focus are two ways of talking about one and the same thing, namely assertion, and not identification or presupposition. Assuming that syntax and semantics are isomorphic, the most far-reaching consequence of this view and the central claim that I make is that there are no existential bare plural subjects. What is generally and a priori taken to be an existential bare plural subject is a (wh-moved) predicate nominal. The genuine external argument in sentences with existential bare plurals in what appears to be the subject position is in fact the Davidsonian event argument. Consequently, the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) should be defined as a requirement on predication. The syntax-semantics isomorphism is emphasized as part of an attempt to show that syntactically, generic and existential bare plurals differ with respect to the D-feature: while generic bare plurals are DPs with a morphologically null D, existential bare plurals, like bare singulars, are NPs altogether lacking a D-projection.

Backgrounding and suppression of reciprocal participants

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Behrens
Keyword(s):  
Reciprocal Relation ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Reciprocal Relations ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Semantic Fields ◽  
Argument Mapping ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Plural Subjects

According to traditional wisdom, reciprocal predicates can only occur with plural subjects. This is assumed either because the reciprocal predicates in question are constructed by means of a reciprocal anaphor, which is considered as being inherently plural and hence requiring a plural antecedent, or, if there is no binding requirement, the following principle of argument mapping is implicitly assumed: all participants of a reciprocal situation need an overt realization by the same highest syntactic argument. Since a reciprocal relation minimally involves the existence of two participants, and since (in the languages considered so far) the highest syntactic argument is the subject, this mapping principle leads to the idea that the subjects of reciprocal predicates should be confined to plural or conjoined phrases. In this paper, I will show that this principle turns out to be unrealistically strong, once real discourse data are considered, in particular from a cross-linguistic perspective. Under certain structural and pragmatic conditions, participants of reciprocal relations may be backgrounded and also suppressed, with the result that, in the second case, they will lack an overt realization altogether. It will be argued that there is a typological correlation between the following three phenomena: discontinuous reciprocals (where one participant is backgrounded and hence realized as an oblique phrase), “true” singular subject reciprocals (where only one participant is realized overtly, while the other is suppressed), and plural subject reciprocals, admitting the interpretation that each individual among the subject’s referents participates in a reciprocal relation with some other (unknown or arbitrary) individual that is, however, suppressed, i.e. not referred to by the subject phrase or any other phrase in the sentence. I will present data from four languages: Hungarian, German, (Modern) Greek and Serbian/Croatian. In general, a cross-linguistic approach will be favored which considers differences and similarities at all relevant levels of description, e.g. discourse pragmatics, verbal aspect, lexical-semantic fields, interfering effects of ambiguity, etc. in addition to structural constraints in marking reciprocity.

scholarly journals Genericity and the denotation of common nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Müller
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Generic Sentences

This paper investigates what the semantics of generic sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) says about the denotation of Noun Phrases in that language. More specifically, it addresses the syntactic and semantic differences among the indefinite nominals that get a generic interpretation in BP. The paper may also be taken to test well-known hypotheses about the functioning of genericity in natural languages.

scholarly journals The Korean hortative construction revisited

Pragmatics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahrim Kim ◽  
Iksoo Kwon
Keyword(s):  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Focal Event ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Frequency Counts

Abstract This paper revisits the hortative -ca construction in Korean from a usage-based perspective, examining its functions in natural interactional spoken data The examination of the actual occurrence of -ca reveals its various functions: -ca indicates that the performer of the focal-event encoded in the utterance may be 1st person plural subject, i.e., the speaker and other interlocutors; 2nd person, i.e., the addressee(s); 1st person, i.e., the speaker; and 3rd person. Our findings provide direct evidence for the different degrees of prototypicality among these functions, which are reflected in their different frequency counts. Furthermore, this study proposes two novel functions of ca, the accordant imperative (to demand that the addressee agree with the speaker that the addressee perform the focal-event) and the speaker hortative (to ask the addressee to perform an action so that the speaker him-/herself can perform the focal-event).

scholarly journals Los clíticos de segunda persona de plural en las lenguas romances de la Península Ibérica

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Víctor Lara Bermejo
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Península Ibérica

AbstractThe Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula possess a second person plural subject pronoun that induces verb and pronoun agreement in 2pl. While standard Catalan chooses us/vos as unstressed pronouns, Portuguese selects vos and Spanish, os. Nevertheless, the data taken from linguistic atlases of the 20th century point out the great quantity of 2pl allomorphs in unstressed pronouns: tos, sos, sus, los and se. In this article, I aim to account for the linguistic geography of 2pl allomorphs and their possible linguistic factors.

Verb Plurality in Kushi: A First Appraisal

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Gian Claudio Batic
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Form ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Plural Subject

Abstract It is a well-known fact that in Chadic languages the notion of verbal plurality falls into two categories: agreement plurality, where a plural subject requires a plural verbal form, and pluractionality, a form used to encode the iterativity (i.e. repetitiveness) or multiplicity (i.e. multiple effects on arguments) of an action. Kushi, a West Chadic language spoken in north-eastern Nigeria, presents both types of plural. In this article, I will illustrate the derivational strategies employed to encode verbal plurality in Kushi—suffixation, infixation, and gemination—showing the existing correlation between plural form and root shape (i.e. verb class). Interesting features of Kushi plurals are the existence of two plurality morphemes (one for non-subjunctive TAM paradigms and one for the subjunctive) and the quality of the final vowel in subjunctive plural verbal forms. All the data used in this paper have been collected in the framework of an on-going project of documentation and description of Kushi.

Subject-verb agreement in Newfoundland French

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth King
Keyword(s):  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Number Marking ◽  
The Third ◽  
Grammatical Variation ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
The Third Person

ABSTRACTIn Newfoundland French the verb does not agree in number with a plural subject in one particular construction–subject relative clauses–but rather displays default singular marking. Agreement is made with the subject relative pronoun, which does not have a morphological feature for number associated with it. This absence of a number feature results in a form consistently spelled out as homophonous with the third-person singular. Gender agreement transmitted in subject relatives containing a predicate adjective is evidence that number marking is at issue, not agreement in general. An exception to this pattern is the (variable) marking of plural agreement in the il y en a construction, explained in terms that are independent from the analysis of the default singular. Newfoundland French agreement is then compared with data from other French varieties, and the approach taken in this study is compared with those of other studies of grammatical variation.

scholarly journals Theory-based considerations influence the interpretation of generic sentences

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Cimpian ◽  
Susan A. Gelman ◽  
Amanda C. Brandone
Keyword(s):  
Generic Sentences
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